Despite his new movie, “The Butler,” sparking much-needed conversations across the nation about racism and discrimination, it seems as if Lee Daniels isn’t really helping to battle some of the offensive stereotypes that have resulted from these types of racial issues in the first place.
Daniels is responding to some serious backlash received after a recent interview with Larry King, where he perpetuated the very stereotypes that the black community hoped he would help tear down.
Lee Daniels recently announced that he feels like America is showing its “true colors” when it comes to racism, but it seems like he is revealing a few true colors of his own.
When the openly gay director was discussing homophobia with King, he suggested that most black women are getting infected with sexually transmitted diseases because they are having sex with gay black men who are afraid to be honest about their sexuality.
“I think they [black gay men] are prejudiced upon even from the African-Americans too,” he began.
He went on to say that when he walked into a gay men’s health crisis center in New York, he saw nothing but black women being serviced because, in his opinion, they had all been having sex with partners who were secretly gay but didn’t feel comfortable coming out.
“Why? Because you simply can’t do it,” he said about gay black men not being open about their homosexuality. “Your family says it, your church says it, your teachers say it, your parents say it, your friends say it, your work says it and so you’re living on this DL thing and you’re infecting black women.”
If you’re an African-American and you feel like a piece of you just shriveled up and died after reading that, you might want to brace yourself because there’s more.
He went on to say that walking into a room full of African-American women with children made him feel like he was in a welfare office.
“I expected to see a room full of gay men, but there are nothing but women that are there – black women with kids, I thought I had walked into the welfare office,” he said.
Needless to say, he was met with some serious backlash, leaving many to wonder what heartfelt apology he would manage to invoke after such an inflammatory remark.
Well, apparently we’re still waiting for that apology. Instead of admitting his mistake and showing remorse for validating such hurtful stereotypes about his own culture, he simply said that he loved black women so much that he wished he was straight.
“To be a gay man, I’m obsessed with and I’m in love with black women,” he told The Huffington Post. “They are everything to me.”
The apology is strangely similar to Rick Ross’s apology for his date rape lyrics on Rocko’s “U.O.E.N.O.” in which the rapper also confessed his love for black women without actually apologizing for what he said.
“I wish I were straight because I love women so much,” Daniels said. “I love black women. The are the reason that I’m here today because I was rarely accepted by any African-American men growing up inclusive of my dad.”
If this is his apology for the offensive statements, we would like to rank it below Lil Wayne’s apology for his degrading Emmett Till reference and Paula Deen’s apology for her use of the N-word.
